SHIVLINGA
Sati announced Her intention to go every morning to worship the ancient Shivlinga in the royal forest reserves. The Shivlinga was so old that no one knew its history, not even Daksha or the noble ministers of the court, nor too the sages who were rumoured to have meditated in the mountains long before the city of Daksha had come into full being.
But the Shivlinga was there, in its monumental presence.
An enormous and beautifully carved out marvel, in mystic grey granite. All around it was the lush green of the forest, and the contrast of grey and green gave it a yet greater mystic feel.
A snake or two were always seen cuddled around it, as though to assert that they were a permanent part of Shiva.
Flowers strung together as garlands, put on the Shivlinga by worshippers, were undoubtedly more transient than the snakes, but nevertheless lay alongside in devotion.
It was common for Shivlingas to have a name. Usually the devotee of Shiva who had constructed a Shivlinga would name it by adding the suffix of Ishwara to his own name, thus acknowledging Shiva’s supremacy and also immortalizing himself, in the bargain.
Almost all the devatas had ritually made a Shivlinga. So there were Indreshwara, Varuneshwara, Agnieshwara Shivlingas.
But this, the colossal forest Shivlinga, grounded as it was, had a magnetism to it, which none could compare. True to its enigma,
it was unnamed. No devata was even born before it existed; so who would name it?
But it did have an extraordinary title - ‘Sristi Iswara Maharaj’,
The Lord of all creation itself.
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